Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

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Does SEO Work – For Advertising Agencies?

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Does SEO Work For Advertising Agencies? A Look At peterlevitan.com

In the interest of transparency… here are some of my very own blog numbers. The Big News: Blogs that pay attention to SEO work to drive sales.

A great deal of the advice I give my advertising agency clients that want to run sharper lead generation business development programs is on the subject of inbound marketing, especially Search Engine Optimization – and how to drive it. Yes, I am a very big fan of outbound as well. I call some of that warm calling. As in my LinkedIn post; “Dump Cold Calling. Go Warm Calling.” demonstrates. But back to SEO.

SEO?

Of course, SEO works — if you work at it. I have worked at it via 488 targeted (read some of my headlines and posts that are written with YOUR interests in mind) blog posts since 2013. Here is some proof of SEO effectiveness from my own stats.

I Like Google.

Search engines have been kind. Does Google dominate? Yes, and here’s some proof. The chart below from WordPress shows where my referral traffic comes from. It also shows that Twitter and LinkedIn work hard for me with over 3,400 referrals.

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I Also Like Direct Traffic.

The one below is from Google Analytics and adds in traffic of 9,000 plus from direct sources.

That’s all I have to say.

Oh, I got over 68,000 Views in 2014. How’d you do? Cause… an advertising agency should be doing much better than me, a single practitioner.

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Want More Traffic For Your Agency — Um, I Mean Targeted Leads?

Give me a call and take me up on my Corleone Offer. I’ll give you at least one good idea in just 15 minutes.

 

4 Hour Workweek On Whisky Or Whiskey

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Yo, AdMan: Do You Know How To Spell Whiskey Or Whisky?

whiskey-bottles-photoI didn’t until I listened to what I think is one of the most entertaining and informative podcasts from Tim Ferris and his 4-Hour Workweek podcast:

The Tattooed Heretic of Wine and Whiskey, Richard Betts.

By the way, its whiskey in countries with an “e” in their name like the U.S.A. And in Japan and Scotland it’s Whisky. If this isn’t important to you, I suggest you bail on the rest of this blog post. Go ahead, drink more vodka.

The Whiskey Deal Via A Great Podcast

You work in advertising which means that according to recent research you are 67% more likely to drink more wine and whiskey than the average U.S. consumer. What’s more… there is a need to know things about booze because you drink it with friends and the occasional client. Hopefully, an AOR client.

img_4268The super entertaining interview is… C/O Tim Ferris… (You’ve read his books, right?) [Read more…] about 4 Hour Workweek On Whisky Or Whiskey

It Might Be Time To Start Your Own Ad Agency

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Yes Folks, You Can Start Your Ad Agency – And Succeed

Screen Shot 2015-09-22 at 8.37.50 PMGreat article in the U.K.’s The Drum from London Advertising’s CEO Michael Moszyinski on what might just happen if you bailed from your ad agency and decided to go out on your own. Sure, it’s scary. Sure, you might not succeed. Sure you are putting your career on the line. Sure you’ll miss the other hundred’s of people you drink with at Ogilvy or Droga5 or 72andsunny.

But, you know you want to do it. You know that you can do a better job than the management of your current agency. You know that you have super special smart ideas that you’d like to share with high-profit clients. You know that your time may be running out. You know that you might even be able to steal one of your clients.

“Confessions of an indie agency start up: Seven years in”

Take a good read of Michael’s agency launch story on The Drum. It will be enlightening, repeat enlightening, and should get your entrepreneurial juices flowing. Here is a brief energizer from London’s history for you to get you packing up… [Read more…] about It Might Be Time To Start Your Own Ad Agency

How To Win New Business

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Yes, How to Win New Business

me me mistake copy jpegNow, I am not so, um, naive to say that all it takes is to get out there with a compelling message and then go for it. But, guess what… all it really takes is to get out there with a compelling message targeted to the right people at the right time – a message that is unique to your business and is difficult to ignore because it goes right to the heart of an issue that is keeping your prospect up at night.  There, I said it. Let me put it another way and I’ll coin it as…

SSP: Smart Sales Pressure. 

OK, one more piece of advice. We all (and I mean all of us) make mistakes that kill pitches and deals. As you might suspect, being conscious of these mistakes is rather important to avoiding them.

Mistakes.

Here is the poster of the 12 mistakes that I outline in my book. For your viewing (and hopefully humorous) pleasure:

Mistake-Poster-

Advertising Agency Names For Your Agency

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Advertising Agency Names and SEO Terms

This is an update to a 2015 post about advertising agency names. Yes, 2015. It was a hit at that time and subsequent blog posts about how to name an advertising agency have done well… as well. Here is an example post (a two-parter) on how to name an advertising agency.

I thought that I’d update this because I took a look at the agency names from some recent award shows – OK, Cannes Lions. I think that names matter:

  • The Monkeys
  • adam&eveDDB
  • GUT
  • SMUGGLER
  • Uncommon Creative Studio
  • Special

Back To Advertising Agency Names From 2015

MemeCenter_1377384243157_38-196x300Before I begin, I just want to apologize for the clickbait headline. Obviously, this headline is silly:

Unbelievable Advertising Agency Names For Your Agency.

But if you hang out on the web these days, you will see clickbait headlines all over – as in ad nauseam (I love the definition: Ad nauseam is a Latin term for a discussion that has continued so long that it has continued “to [the point of] nausea”.) The subject of the proliferation of clickbait, even by major advertisers and publishers – vs. delivering consumer value vs. trickery – is a worthy subject for another post. But, let’s get back to advertising agency names.

SEO

Screen Shot 2015-09-09 at 10.59.19 AMOn the left is a list of some of the top search terms that people have used to wind up on my website. I only include these (and they are a bit wonky, and at best directional, ’cause they are from WordPress stats.) However, it is interesting (well, to me) that it appears that there are a lot of searches for ‘how to name an advertising agency.’ Advertising agency people really dig this subject and they spend hours thinking hard about selecting the perfect name.

They also spend hours thinking that they need to redesign their website. And, many should.

Note: If you read to the bottom, you will see that agency names just might not matter. But, first…

I renamed my ex-agency twice.

I admit it, I’ve been a re-namer too. When I bought my agency in 2002 it was Ralston Group (named after the founder); then we moved to Ralston360 in 2004 (we were becoming more digital and direct responsive.) A few years later we switched to Citrus after we bought the design firm Citrus and expanded our presence in the Portland market. We simply liked their name more than ours (and, as you might expect we also got tired of the 360 thing, 360 got way overused) so we took Citrus on.

What’s Your Agency Name?

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